


The (Other) Day The World Ended

by notavodkashot



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-18
Updated: 2019-06-18
Packaged: 2020-05-13 23:54:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19261741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notavodkashot/pseuds/notavodkashot
Summary: "I'm not sure," said Crowley. "Think about it. For my money, the really big one will be all of Us against all of Them."It was a good thing that no one had taken him up on that bet.Or, twenty one years later, there's that other pesky prophecy about the end of it all.





	The (Other) Day The World Ended

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know, this scene grabbed me and wouldn't let me go, so tiny ficlet it is!

“This is _your_ fault,” Crowley hissed at Aziraphale, tongue thinning out between his teeth on reflex, and leaned hard on the door, as if holding it back against thunderous thumps attempting to throw it down. “Now they think we’re… we’re bloody _blessed_ , or something.” 

“Would you rather you'd had a bath in holy water, hm?” Aziraphale muttered back, and wished dearly that hissing were not beneath him, because in his experience, the only good and proper answer to a hiss was another. “In any case, it was Agnes’ idea anyway. Vehicle of our salvation as it was.” 

“Damnation, you mean,” Crowley deadpanned, eyes rolling high enough behind his sunglasses that Aziraphale caught sight of a fleck of yellow as he did. 

The knocking echoed again. It was not, despite Crowley’s dramatics, loud or thunderous or anything quite so rude. Just a short, sharp rapping of knuckles against the solid wooden door that Newt had insisted on putting at the front of the cottage and which Anathema had ended up fixing in place with two thick, heavy, frankly medieval hinges, while Newt himself had spent that afternoon puzzling over the wireless drill that refused to work mostly out of self-preservation. 

They were in Bahamas, celebrating their honey moon, however, so they were nowhere near the cottage to witness the rather bizarre flock gathered out on the lawn that morning. All shapes and sizes, guardedly stationed in two very clearly delimited sides. Practice, more than anything, really, considering there really wasn’t much to tell them apart, these days. Or before, to be honest. 

Crowley had not, strictly speaking, volunteered to house sit for the rather late married Pulsifers. Aziraphale had. But then, Aziraphale saw it as just penance, considering the entire wedding had, in fact, ended up being his fault, what with him asking Anathema when her twentieth wedding anniversary was – poor memory, or rather, too much memory, he explained, made it hard to keep track of recurrent dates, after all – which had, at long last, reminded Newt and Anathema of that one thing they kept forgetting to do and which always seemed to nag and itch at the back of their mind. 

Crowley had laughed, toasted at the reception, laughed again, and then parked himself in the cottage purely for the sport of watching Aziraphale try awkwardly to not upset anything by fixing what he shouldn’t. 

“Oh Lord, heal this toaster, this waffle iron, this poor, _sinless_ hairdryer,” Crowley crooned at him, watching him try to navigate his way across Newt’s tinkering room and all the sad, chirring, sparking corpses of electronics he liked to play with, ever since Anathema had the sun panels installed and they were effectively cut off from the rest of the Tadfield power grid. 

It had been going quite fine, really, right up to that morning, when a flock – they liked to believe they were two flocks, separate and opposite, thank you very much, but they were really quite the same when you got down to it – had amassed on the lawn, and then the knocking started. 

“Oh for Adam’s sake, we can’t ignore them forever,” Aziraphale said, gathering aplomb. “Open up, Crowley.” 

“But,” Crowley began, and then hissed in displeasure as Aziraphale nudged him firmly out of the way and flung the monstrously heavy wooden door open. 

Well, he tried. The door creaked and groaned and then finally came to a stop at a perfectly functional forty degree angle with a tired sigh. Sometimes, and only for Anathema, it managed fifty four degrees, and only because she remembered to oil its hinges every third day and never called it names. For Crowley, it barely bothered to swing open twenty. 

“Hello!” Aziraphale said, far too cheerfully for Crowley’s taste. “Good morning,” he added, smiling benignly at his audience. “Tea?” 

“We’re not offering them tea,” Crowley hissed loudly, sulking menacingly in the shadows just beyond the door. “I don’t offer tea to people who dunk me in a bathtub of holy water,” he added, giving Aziraphale a pointed look. 

“Well, I do,” Aziraphale huffed, and turned up the wattage of the smile by about fifty. “And to people who burned me in eternal hell fire, too. These things happen, right?” 

“Angel,” Crowley hissed a bit louder, testy and tired and entirely willing to slam the door back close – he’d try, of course, even though it took the door approximately anywhere between three to five minutes to slide back shut, even at terminal speeds – and go right back to sleep. 

“ _At any rate_ ,” Aziraphale said, determined to ignore Crowley, his sulking and anything resembling sense, clearly, “what seems to be the matter?” 

“I’ve fallen,” Michael deadpanned, looking closer to constipated than truly contrite, which was so close to the usual look adoring their face that Aziraphale wouldn’t have known the difference unless told. 

“I’ve been uplifted,” Hastur snarled at the same time, singularly puzzled by this fact, or his lack of disdain for it, like he’d lost his favorite torturing stick, but wasn’t truly broken up about it. 

“Oh,” Aziraphale replied, succinct and calm and very clearly not upset at all. “Dear.” 

“You’ve gone through this,” Michael demanded, with the certain zeal that served just as well above and below. “This… _mingling_.” 

“Grey,” Hastur spat out, single syllable thrown out like a declaration of war. “’s why you didn’t _end_ , way back when. Immunized you, that.” 

“Right,” Crowley lied, stepping out the shadows to get a good look at the crowd, because he was a curious creature by nature, after all, forever unable to not ask what. Or how. Or when. Or why. He was rather fond of why, in fact. “Of course,” he said, nodding to himself, and then turning to Aziraphale. “A moment?” 

“Of… of course! Yes,” Aziraphale spluttered, and then did his best to pretend he hadn’t. “Excuse us, please.” 

Five minutes later, as the door finally closed under their combined weights hefted against it, Crowley did the sensible, rational thing and grabbed Aziraphale by the front of his vest. 

“What are we going to _do_?” He hissed – it was a terrible morning, all that hissing, he was bound to start spitting soon, and wouldn’t that be a drag? 

“I don’t… don’t… help? Perhaps?” Aziraphale ventured, with the air of a child guessing the answering he thought his teacher wanted to hear, and three quarters sure he was wrong. 

“Help? _Help_. Help! _Them!_ ” 

It was official, Crowley was spitting. 

“Well, _look_ at them!” Aziraphale cried out, properly anguished. “They’re scared and, and confused and-“ 

Crowley remembered the last time Aziraphale’s voice reached that frantic pitch. There’d been a sword and an apple and a whole lot of trouble that might or might not have been the right thing to do. 

“No,” he said, categorically. 

“Please,” Aziraphale retorted, going straight for the precise tone that could, in all of creation, bring Crowley to heel. 

Or his knees. 

“No!” Crowley insisted, throwing his arms up in the air. “We’re done with this! All of this! We walked away! They can’t just… walk after us.” 

“I’m sure they didn’t _choose_ to,” Aziraphale rationalized, head swinging sideways to emphasize his point. “But perhaps…” 

“Perhaps?” Crowley asked, even though he knew he shouldn’t, because he truly could never resist temptation to ask. 

“You know,” Aziraphale went on, oddly coy as he only ever got when discussing one very specific topic that had fueled their not-conversations about it for the last two decades and change. “It _is_ all rather…” 

“Angel,” Crowley growled, raising a finger and pointing it square up Aziraphale’s nostrils, “so help me… _whoever_ , I will do you harm if you say it.” 

He wouldn’t, really. He knew it. And worse, Aziraphale knew it. 

“Ineffable.” 

Crowley made a sound like a wounded thing, a paradoxically low-toned shriek as he turned away and gave serious thought to the notion of throwing himself face first into the nearest baptismal pond. 

“I’ll call Adam,” Aziraphale said cheerfully, though not to bask in the glow of victory, because that would be unbecoming. 

Four point two minutes later, Crowley gave up on the door and stuck his head out to face the impassive crowd outside. 

“Tea?” He hissed, rather impressively given the lack of even a stray fricative in that syllable. 

“No.” 

“Yes.” 

It was shaping up to be a rather long day, after all, that cold December morning. 

**Author's Note:**

> Come hang out on [DW](https://notavodkashot.dreamwidth.org/) or [Twitter](https://twitter.com/notavodkashot), if you'd like.


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